School athletic trainer gets 36 years for sexually assaulting 12 female students
A former high school athletic trainer accused of sexually assaulting a dozen teenage girls was sentenced Monday to 36 years in prison after pleading no contest to felony charges, officials said.
Richard Alexander Turner, 65, entered the plea during a preliminary hearing to determine whether there was enough evidence for the case to go to trial, court records show. He pleaded no contest to 13 counts of sexual assault involving 12 girls, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office.
“He will now face the stark reality of likely spending the rest of his days in prison,” prosecutors said in a statement.
Turner was facing 21 felony charges stemming from interactions with students he worked with from 2017 to 2022 at high schools in the San Fernando Valley, according to court records. On Monday, he pleaded no contest to one count of forcible rape, three felony counts of sexual penetration of an unaware victim due to fraud or misrepresentation, four counts of sexual penetration by foreign object and five counts of sexual battery involving an unconscious person.
The plea saves Turner’s victims — who ranged in age from 15 to 17 at the time of the assaults, prosecutors said — from “the traumatic experience of testifying at trial,” the district attorney’s office said.
Turner’s arrest in September 2022 came after a cheerleader at Birmingham Community Charter High School accused him of touching her inappropriately.
A Birmingham Charter School cheerleader who has accused Richard Turner of sex abuse wonders how the trainer was allowed to continue working after previous assault allegations.
Similar allegations had been raised against Turner five years earlier. In 2017, a student at Van Nuys High School told officials that Turner touched her inappropriately. A police report was filed, but Los Angeles police cited a lack of evidence in the case, and no arrest was made or charges filed.
Turner had been working as an independent contractor at the time. Los Angeles Unified School District officials said his contract was terminated six weeks after he started working at Van Nuys High School, after a female student alleged “misconduct.”
After the Birmingham allegation, police connected Turner’s name to the earlier sexual assault report. Ultimately, other accusers from the charter school and Van Nuys High came forward.
After the initial charges against Turner were announced, two more victims spoke to authorities. All were assaulted while getting treatments for sports injuries, prosecutors said.
Some victims reported that Turner became violent during the assaults, while others didn’t realize at the time that they had been sexually assaulted, L.A. County Dist. Atty. George Gascón said.
“It is crushing for the victims, their families and all of us that, in our education systems, someone would take advantage of our youth,” Gascón said at the time Turner was charged.
On Monday, he applauded the students who had to the courage to speak out.
“All 12 victims came together to ensure that the defendant could no longer be able to abuse his position of trust and harm anyone else,” Gascón’s statement said.
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